Yang

She had let the last die. She would do anything in her power to let the next live and prosper. She would slave away for hours to secure her "adorbable". Just a couple hours of daydreaming was all it took for one text box to broach the bad news. The limitations of the game and its 8-bit graphics showed her enough of what she needed to see. A half raccoon, half cat hybrid rolled over dead.

How a piece of code could starve didn't make any sense to Wynter. The dusty drafts that disrupted her humming symphony that came from the cracked park station window made her sneeze. Some fresh air is preferred, but the woods are scary. And the monsters could be roaming about, waiting to sink their teeth into her. She had to keep living. She had a mission she wanted to carry out to its end.

Irritation made a vein pop up on Wynter's forehead. This sunlight that cascaded over her from the window was making the game hard to see. When a dissatisfying, low pitched beat alerted her to a twelfth failed minigame in a row, she sighed to the skies, letting her complaints float up to the vacuum of space.

"Darn it." Wynter said. The weather was getting cooler as she traveled north, and this humidity was the calm before the welcomed storm. Around one more week, and hopefully, snow would be bountiful. Snowballs; all day, every day.

Wynter wore only a zipped-up jacket to cover her upper body, so the air that did flow to her space under the desk would cool her down enough to focus on making Floofelpoof a full grown adult adorbable. She didn't change her attire much; only when whatever she wore, after days of scavenging, left her clothes too ripped, drenched, or anything else she couldn't reasonably fathom. But the waist high, floral designed outerwear has kept up just fine. Wynter loved that the rose patterns were only on her left shoulder and arm. It was very aesthetically pleasing. She liked her jeans too; they just rotted away into even more comfortable shorts! Everything is looking up in her adventure.

Just a walk around the parking lot so Wynter's legs wouldn't go numb and feel like static sounds would be the last time she left the park station for the night. She placed her game down on the floor and shook her hands. She looked at her calloused palms and expected them to have an indentation by the small, curved design of the plastic handheld. Mustering up the courage needed for this walk, she began to stand up.

Before she could rise, the door opened. Something had entered the station. As no noise broke the barrier of silence that Wynter had maintained for the past couple of hours and legs that had the thickness of logs moved over and picked something up from the surface above her, she knew someone had entered. My goodness, what hairy legs. As the man spoke to himself, Wynter decided to respond. She could only see up to the knees, but as she rose to greet this new person, a gravelly, hoarse voice said, "Take care." The door crashed back into place.

Wynter waited for a moment – not to check for sounds or actions, but to see if he'd come back. She'd met some people who were uncomfortable with strangers on her journey. It was a wide spectrum from them being crazy loud to crazy quiet. She didn't know where this man fell. Curious, she stood up and stretched. From what she saw, if this man has shorter shorts than her, she wanted to know about them.

A backpack and a blanket was all Wynter owned. Some trash and other doodads were in her jacket pockets, but these two items were ones she had from the beginning. Many possible mementos, no matter how insignificant in the eye of someone other than her, could be in the big pocket that took up all the space in her bag, but she chose to keep what she had kept with her from birth to now. Her blanket.

No matter where she was or what was going on, becoming one with this compact igloo would have Wynter's heart rate slow and her soul soften. That's a reference to what she named her blanket, "Iggy."

Gently folding and placing Iggy in his home that followed Wynter everywhere she went, she opened the door to the wild beyond. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and that man was waiting. He wasn't waiting for her; it was vice versa. Wynter likes to meet new people.

One. Two. Three. Three steps were taken before she stopped in her tracks. A cold sweat started to accumulate on her brow when a monster came into view. Many places Wynter had let the wind take her had people of all kinds killing the walking husks left and right. That didn't sit right with her. Wynter never noticed the eyes of the monsters that looked like the aftermath of a blown-out candle, nor their screams for her to come closer in the form of primal screeches. She noticed how this one had dyed hair. How this one had a name tag and, in conjunction with his uniform, was a waiter. How that one was a child. The eyes send information to the brain. The brain is the center of all information. The brain told Wynter to run.

These signals were mixed together in a clash. Should she go and hide in the safety of the park post or go and look for the mysterious man? While the brain is the hub of all info, Wynter's heart is what makes the final decision. She sprinted briskly past the monster, giving it well wishes in her head.

The man had been in a hurry for something, as bigfoot prints were pressed into the ground and went at a jittery pace in a straight line. A couple minutes of careful jogging led her to a drop with a secure beach and a big boat on the shore of the splashing water.

This had to be where the man lived. The trail stopped at a staircase made of soggy wood. She would go in and introduce herself. Rolling down the right hill to the beach for no other reason than she thought it would be fun, Wynter climbed up onto the front of the yacht. There was some space to sit down and let the water tickle your toes and it led to a big, linear area with fancy seats littered with tons of junk.

Crumpled notes and tons of unidentifiable metals needed Wynter to watch her step or she'd get a nail in her foot. Carefully maneuvering as to not disturb whatever work this was, she made it to a staircase in the back. Before her eyes could see the stairs, she threw up.

In the blink of an eye, her lunch of fruit snacks erupted. She was able to salvage this situation by aiming into the toilet in the bathroom where the stench came from. Glad she didn't stain the carpet, Wynter was face to face with the demonic lavatories. There was something on the floor of this man's bathroom, and it was absolutely unreal in its disgustingness. Now, her upbringing was inside the room, too. "Oh no, here it comes again." She thought in a frenzy.

Opening a door to the right of the bathroom, she went out onto a back area with a lawn chair and let the water drown her bile. Wynter almost collapsed but she caught herself and laid down on the wooden deck. She didn't want to leave and not find out what caused that event, but rather rid this place of whatever food instigated the quarantine zone behind her. It was a cosmic obligation.

Wynter was laying on her side, facing the endless horizon, letting the water caress her fingers as the boat matched the waves in going back and forth. It was a speechless lullaby. Some clanking sounding like rummaging through a chest came from up the stairs — meaning the man was home — but she'd be causing no harm in taking a light nap. No coverings were needed; the warmth of the sun was a cocoon in and of itself. Her vision became blurry and she heard footsteps above her to an area above where she entered. "Just a couple minutes, mister." She mouthed, almost asleep.

When she woke, a blanket of moonlight was like a beacon in the sky. The lunar spectacle shined almost as much as her eyes. How beautiful. Wynter was happy she let life lead her here.